as if money wasn’t strange enough when the government ran it
Fed up with the federal reserve? Tired of the blatant monopoly the US government holds in currency issuance?
You have options!
Specifically the Liberty Dollar. Created by folks who care as an alternate form of tradeable currency for Americans. And, as I think about it, presumably anybody else, because, well, it’s non-governmental.
You can keep using the Federal Reserve’s money, which is backed by:
> the national debt,
> Alan Greenspan’s ability to see the future,
> the IRS’ ability to collect taxes,
> and the tanks and guns of the U.S. military.
Or you can start using the Liberty Dollar, which is backed by:
> fully owned, insured, audited, neutrally-warehoused, safe and secure gold and silver which sits peacefully in a vault and does not stir up trouble around the world or rack up debt for your children to pay off.
“Sits peacefully in a vault and does not stir up trouble around the world”. That is my kind of money indeed.
Seriously though folks, this serves to remind us all of the basic weirdness of currency.
Notes of legal tender, little bits of paper, “bills”, are strange when “backed” by gold or whatever precious commodity stored in Fort Knoxes. Back when the US currency was still based on a gold standard, did anybody ever walk into the local federal agent and hand over their $20 and ask for a few shavelings of Gold?
Currency is presumably even weirder when it isn’t backed by something. What the Liberty dollar people call “fiat currency”. What the hell is that anyway? You get enough of this fancy paper together, walk into a car dealership and they’ll let you drive off with one of their cars. Huh?
Incidentally, the Liberty people point out that fiat currency “has always collapsed, throughout all of history”. Yikes.
The Liberty Dollar site provides a copy of a lawyer’s letter of advice to them. It breaks down the “just what the hell is a dollar bill question” this way:
The paper instrument entitled Patriot is a combination of several objectives. In the first place, it is a sales receipt evidencing that the initial Buyer paid $10 in U.S. Federal Reserve Notes for the document of title to one (1) Troy ounce of .999 fine silver.
In the second place, it is a warehouse receipt evidencing the storage of the same one (1) ounce of silver by the warehouseman pursuant to the terms as set forth on the reverse side of the instrument.
Thirdly, the warehouse receipt is made negotiable thereby permitting free transferability without endorsement of the paper instrument payable to bearer.
Which sounds odd, but the item described above is basically what people used to carry around sheaths of in their wallet until we went to a non-gold-standard currency. Reciepts for the posession of metal.
On a similar note, why not start making payments in E-Gold? You make an account, buy some real gold (or platinum or silver or palladium), which E-Gold stores for you, and tell them to put it into other people’s account when you want to buy something. It’s kind of like a timeshare on bullion I guess, except you have full access but never use it. Perhaps it’s not like a timeshare. Whatever it is, there are 152 000 people using it, according to the statistics generator on their website, 16 600 of whom used their account in the last 24 hours. A lot of weirdos out there. Gold remote-posessing weirdos. E-Gold was started in ’96 by a doctor who figured the international Interweb was going to need an international currency. Boy, he really got the drop on Paypal. Then again, every fiat currency throughout history has collapsed. Paypal may have it on user base, but for security through troubled times, my Liberty Dollars are on E-Gold.
Money money money. Strange strange strange.